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Galactic Timeline
13.7B years BP: The formation of the cosmos including the Milky Way Galaxy Some ancient entity's whim or some unknown force causes the "big bang", resulting in all that is 3.5M years BP: Humanity. The earliest recorded forms of humanity evolve and begin making tools to survive and eventually flourish. 598,073 BP : Bears. A small colony ship of Ursarians bound for a new world is nearly wiped out when the skeleton crew outside of cryo hibernation gets into an argument over the last salmon-berry pie, and they careen toward Earth. At that time, Earth is less hospitable but survivable as it's recovering from a mild ice age and has many hardy creatures that have adapted. The survivors are driven off from their ship by local fauna including human ancestors and they begin a new existence as what humans will one day dictate as an apex predator in most locales they come to exist in. 12142 BP: The Swarm Amasses Originally called the Kucharn and followed a goddess named Hylax, believed to be the first of their species, a Kucharn queen who ascended to godhood to watch over her progeny for eternity. They later abandoned Hylax and evolved as a series of hive minds whose drones had no agency of their own. Kucharn hives competed constantly with each other, until one learned the trick of subsuming another colony's intelligence into its own. This proto-Swarm quickly overwhelmed the other hives, stripped bare its homeworld with its hunger, then learnt the principles of space flight. The Swarm's biological hive-ships carried it through the stars, descending on world after world 8,239 BP : Gnomish Drift Pioneering The Gnomes, having come to understand the drift and space itself, discover Drift Beacon technology. Their curiosity spurs them on to do short-hop drift excursions where they setup drift buoys in important locations throughout space, ever expanding outward from their home world. This endeavor is both a boon and a hindrance to the galaxy. It leads to many other space borne races being introduced to each other and the wars between them including the all-consuming swarm. 2856.7 BP / 2334 BCE: Dragons and the great Scientific Advance of Humanity Humans use forms of math more advanced than their descendants even 4500 years later, theology is still widely considered a scientific pursuit and the earliest known depictions and evidence of dragons occur in some of the most advanced scientific early human civilizations, particularly Babylon which means "Gate of God" or "the Gods". "Tiamat" is a "Primordial being" who begets all other deities in ancient Sumerian and Babylonian theology. Humanity will later decree that this is just early religious rambling and myth, but use the name Tiamat throughout fantasy by the end of the 20th Century AD. 2312.3 BP / 1812 BCE: The Swarm and Ancient Egypt Advances After eating the Gnomes that run into them in the vastness of space, they continue on with their gained knowledge to consume all. Ancient Egypt is in a stable age leading to the height of it's power after having completed work on one of the wonders of world over 750 years earlier. Many humans believe the Pyramids could not have been made by man and must have been extra terrestrials or the gods themselves 0 AP "Something happens and galactic community joins together to divide up territory" 1327.7-1334 AP / 1939-1945 CE The Great War, Soviet Atomic Bomb Project The Soviet scientific community discussed going forward with their atomic bomb project since the 1930s following the first World War, and in 1939 intelligence told them that Britain, the United States and Germany were all working on a similar super-weapon. They went ahead with the project in 1940 to keep up with the other superpowers in the war. The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was signed in 1939 which allowed Germany to invade Poland without Russian interference, while Russia expanded westward. Also in 1939 Britain and France had guaranteed to protect Poland's borders, and thus the war began. In December 1940 after conquering south eastern Europe, Hitler broke the nonaggression pact which he had created as a temporary tactical advantage when he started Operation Barbarossa which was underway by the end of June 1941. What followed was one of the most catastrophic losses of human life due to war in human history. The initial incursion into Russia was successful, however by 1942 the Soviet Union began testing their earliest A-Bomb prototypes on the German invader's front-line strongholds and tank lines, eventually forcing German retreat and causing the eastern front to be largely abandoned due to the collateral damage and fallout radiation which caused nightmarish stories of zombies and mutants. The war raged on in the Pacific and on the western front until May 1st 1945 when the Soviet Union dropped their a-bomb named RDS-1, Device 251, or "First Lightning" from a Petlyakov Pe-8 onto Rostock, a major air and sea military production town and port who supported the Nazis more than most. This first major blow was followed up 3 days later by another atomic blast on Kiel, another major seaport and Nazi naval production center. RDS-2 or "Rolling Thunder" detonated above Kiel on May 4th, just one day before a British-U.S. joint T-Force military operation was set to take the town. This overwhelming show of force combined with Hitler's apparent suicide just days earlier had the Nazis in full retreat and surrender by the end of that same month. The radioactive fallout that followed and massive infrastructure and human life collateral damage made the Soviet Union settle down for a time, still in control of many lands they had taken during the previous years. No one tried to get them to give up their annexing of lands they considered to be theirs, they dared not poke the bear. 1909.7 AP / 2497 CE: Gnomish Exodus Gnomes largely disappear from the known galaxy, presumably to continue with their curious exploration of the unknown. Around this time a crafty but belligerent race of small humanoids begins antagonizing the galaxy, leading some to wonder if there is some connection with the gnome's disappearance 3139 CE The Veskarium Attacks 3312 CE The Swarm Interrupts 2660 AP / 3326 CE: What lies beyond A diplomatic ship with representatives of the various galactic races approach humanity from outside known space. They welcome the humans to the galactic community but have dire news indeed: A great war is being waged against an all consuming hive-mind and it will soon find it's way to the Sol system. Humanity is greatly outclassed in either physiology or technology of these races but not in military know-how. They begin prepping for the inevitable and welcome the outside races' help, leading to a group comprised of humanity's most elite fighting forces as well as the experts available from their new galactic community, leading to the formation of the Terran Emergency Coalition or TEC. 2665 AP / 3331 CE Surviving the Swarm After years of attempting to stave off the all-consuming swarm with several other galactic races making themselves known in the process, the Terran Emergency Coalition sends a small but elite team of humans led by Commander Gideon Yutani into the swarm's main staging area of living swarm ships with the mission of covertly sabotaging them from within. Their mission is successful after extensive loss of life, and they attempt an escape on a prototype stealth destroyer but are chased by the swarm which converges on them in retaliation. To escape death the team is jettisoned into deep space in cryo-stasis while a lone pilot and his advanced AI computer inside the ship itself attempt to lure the swarm away. The ship and pilot didn't make it, but the combined fleets assigned to the defense of Sol led by every ship remaining of the human fleets converges on the swarm staging area and defeats what remains of the enemy in the confusion. Humanity it seems is saved, but the swarm must still be out there, and Gideon himself and his remaining team are never found due to their isolation.